1. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to television advertisements. Specifically, the invention is directed to monitoring the effectiveness of television advertisements.
2. Background of the Invention
Existing television (TV) advertisement (ad or commercial) injection and delivery systems and Audience Measurement Systems (AMS) have evolved as an amalgamation of multi-vendor, multi-protocol hardware and software components. These components were not built to work well together. The components communicate with each other over “integration points” without necessarily relaying all the data needed by the AMS. As such, the components do not take into consideration advertisers' demands to receive accurate, reliable, and timely ad viewership reporting data.
In existing TV systems, ads, including audio and/or video and/or interactive enhancements (for example Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) applications), are injected at several points. Ads can be injected by, for example the national broadcasters (i.e. NBC or ABC), the programming networks (e.g. ESPN), the local programming network affiliates, the cable operators (or equivalent) with centralized ad injection at the head-end, the cable operators with targeted ads with distributed injection over switched digital video infrastructure, cable operators with targeted ads stored in Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and injected into live or recorded streams, Video on Demand (VOD) operators, or Internet video streaming operators.
To generate accurate ad viewership information for all ad types, a client device based AMS system, which logs events on a client device, has to rely on the accuracy of information it receives from all ad injection points for all ad types. Existing AMS systems perform well when (and only when) program guide scheduling data, broadcast advertisement scheduling data, client device logged event data, and other relevant pieces of information are accurate and completely in synchronization.
However, in real life, there are many exceptions (e.g. sporting events running overtime or breaking news) which cause changes to any one of the abovementioned schedules. Such changes are not propagated through the system in real-time. This shortcoming prevents the AMS from receiving accurate and synchronized information from all relevant sources on time, precluding the AMS from generating accurate ad viewership reports. Furthermore, traditional AMS do not provide information on which ads were actually displayed on the display device (e.g. TV) or if a viewer has actually viewed the ad. Finally, traditional AMS cannot measure actual viewer reaction to ads if the ads have no calls to action (e.g. click to buy, call to buy, click to get coupon, or click to get more information).
For example U.S. Pat. No. 6,983,478 to Grauch et al. discloses a typical, existing AMS. Grauch discloses a system that tracks a viewer's clickstream (i.e. the button presses on the user's remote control) data and attempts to match it with guide scheduling data records and advertisement scheduling data records. Such systems generate a large amount of data that must be sifted through to determine viewership. Furthermore, the data is often inaccurate due to unreported scheduling changes (e.g. a sporting event runs over or a breaking news event occurs), misread or unread clicks (e.g. if a button is pressed but the TV does not receive the command or if a button is pressed but the AMS does not register the pressed button), or other unforeseen events.
In a system similar to the AMS system disclosed by Grauch, will generate, transport, and store billions of records per day. The records will have to be analyzed and compiled into reports which takes enormous amounts of computing power. As such, existing systems relay on small sample sizes (panels) which are setup and updated over very long periods of time (e.g. months or years). Such infrequent updates and small sample sizes (usually in the thousands of viewers) preclude typical AMS from accurately measuring viewership of many types (movies, shows, advertisement spots, infomercials) and units (specific titles) of content. Moreover, for the content that typical AMS do measure, there is a high margin of error.